As someone who grew up in the 80s and early 90s, the action hero and big action movie blockbusters are something that I hold in very high regard. The Expendables was an attempt to bring that kind of testosterone-filled, badass, gun firing, hard-punching, and super muscular style of movie back to the mainstream and it totally worked!
How to Stream or Download The Expendables (2010)
You can stream it or you can download the film from a digital store. Click on the Download button at the end of this review and make your choice. If you like Sylvester Stallone, check him out also in Creed and Creed II.
The Movie Review
This was brought to us by Sylvester Stallone, one of the biggest action movie stars of the 80s and 90s and a damn fine actor in his own right too. Stallone not only was a co-writer on the script, but he also handled directing duties for the movie as well. The most notable thing about The Expendable is the ensemble cast.
As well as Stallone, this movie has a ton of awesome action heroes. The two cast members I got a kick out of were Dolph Lundgren who had not been in a movie for what felt like forever and Eric Roberts who kicked ass in the Best of the Best series, a real favorite of mine as a kid. Jet Li, Jason Statham, Steve Austin, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, and of course, Stallone himself are some of the notable cast members here.
If you ask me, The Expendables 100 percent achieved what it was trying to do. This is a fun throwback to an era that felt like it was long gone or at the very least not stuck to being just a straight-to-streaming service or DVD kind of genre. Stallone proved that a movie like this could still be released in theatres and be successful.
The plot of the movie is not the most original, but it works very, very well. We have a group of badass mercenaries that are hired to go into South America and take out a dictator of this small island. Each member of the team has their own thing that makes them special such as Ying Yang being a martial artist, Lee Christmas being an expert with knives, Toll Road being a demolitions master and Gunner Jensen being a crazy, but awesome sniper.
There are a few twists along the way and ultimately what we have is a movie where a bunch of tough guys has to work together to save the day and show that they really are heroes. This is a movie that you really could imagine being released back in 1998 and people absolutely losing their minds over it.
The Expendables is just a really fun and over-the-top kind of action movie. Some people may say that the plot is not all that great, but I think it works great for this kind of movie. Plus, you really do buy into these characters and the performances are far better than they got credit for, each member of the team is believable and you get sucked right into this badass world.
While I would not say that the original Expendables movie is my favorite. I do feel that this was an excellent place for the franchise to start. It has some great cameos that lead into the sequel and above all else, it was just so awesome to see a movie like this be made in a day and age when people thought stuff like being shown in theatres was long gone.
